iMac - Brand new Mac user, have a few questions

Hello everyone!! I'm new here and I'll be buying an iMac 20" 2.4 soon. This will be my very first Mac computer and I have a few questions. I plan on networking my Dell XPS 1210 laptop and the iMac. Is that possible? Would I be able to share files? I also know very little about the Mac OS. Does it comes w/ OS X or the new operating system? And lastly, whats so great about Lepard??

Sorry about the silly questions. I just want my first iMac to be flawless.

Networking your Mac and PC will be possible. If the PC has Vista on you may need to tinker a little but sharing files will def. be possible.

Your iMac will come with OS X (the apple OS has been called OS X for about 6 or so years now). If you are buying a brand new iMac then your mac will come with the latest version of OS X (10.5 or Leopard).

What's so great about Leopard?

That's a tricky one and will ultimately be down to your own personal opinion. I really like Leopard and I guess I'd personally say that the best thing about 10.5 is Time Machine which automatically keeps track of any changes you make to yours files/data giving you a very nice backup system - easy to use and visually quite please to use when looking for a file that you may have accidentally deleted.

As RNDdave said, it is possible to network a PC and Mac together, I done it with XP.
Leopard is the newest release of OSX. It runs great on duo core intel. Everyone is going to have there favorite feature, and you will have yours. Overall it is responsive OS that is stable and has great features.

And you have no experience with previous versions of OS X - so you're comparisons will only be OS X vs Windows.

In that view, you just gotta try it. Think back on the excitement of your very first computer - that is, I believe, what most experience with their first Mac.

It's not going to be flawless though, remember, you don't know how to do stuff yet. There is a learning curve, but it won't be as hard to learn as that first windows machine was. And you found a great place, full of folks willing to help out.

Read thru the stickies listed in the switchers forum and you'll have a great head start.

I cannot be held responsible for the things that come out of my mouth.
In the Windows world, most everything folks don't understand is called a virus.

Networking is not just possible, it's very easy.
On the Mac side, you just end up with the PC listed in the side bar and you just click on it to delve inside the PC and do what you want with the files.